anything whatsoever. This entails that your proof is invalid in itself and that, even if it were sound, it would establish only the opposite of what you seek to prove and the opposite of what every rational person affirms. For every rational person knows that events do occur, whether or not they hold that the celestial spheres are beginningless. Your proof rests on the claim that an agent endowed with power favors one of two things within his power over the other without a determining factor, and that the eternal will—which bears the same relation to everything willed—favors one willed thing over another without any determining factor other than one whose relation to all determining factors is identical, without differentiation. Yet it is self-evidently contrary to reason to maintain that a contingent thing’s existence is favored over its nonexistence without a determining factor, or that one of two equivalent alternatives is favored over the other without a cause that requires this.

Even if this were conceded to be valid, it would invalidate the proof used to establish the existence of the Creator and that the world had a beginning. For that proof rests on the premise that whatever comes into being must have a cause that brings it into being. This entails that favoring its coming into being over its nonexistence requires a determining factor. Moreover, something must have newly proceeded from that originating, determining cause which necessarily entails the existence of the originated thing it has brought into being. If its existence did not follow necessarily, its existence would remain possible and contingent: it could either exist or not exist. Favoring existence over nonexistence therefore requires a determining factor that brings it into being. Thus, everything